In the early years, the
Superman comic strip was helmed by creators Siegel and
Shuster, and though Shuster was ghosted by several other
artists due to his failing eyesight, he still insisted on
doing the inking himself.

The dailies lasted from 1939 to 1966 when
interest in superhero comic strips began to wane. The
comics had a brief revival in from 1977 to 1983
coinciding with the first three Superman movies.

Superman's Origins

The daily comic strips
introduced the back story of Superman's birth and flight
from Krypton to Earth. Prior to that, the planet had no
name, nor did his parents Jor-L and Lora (the spelling in
the comic strip) Superman, likewise, was given a
Kryptonian name -- "Kal-L". With very few
changes, this has remained the origin story of Superman.

"Will all great
Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?"

There was a kind of
vindictiveness to Clark/Superman in the early comic
strips. In the strip above, he makes no attempt to save
the doomed man and believes he deserved to die. In the
strip below, he literally kills a carload of men without
remorse. This uncharacteristic bloodlust from Clark
existed in the dailies, but was banned from the comic
books due to Whitney Ellsworth creating a code of conduct
that prevented Superman from killing.

The dailies also provided
this oddity. Superman, who often rescued women from wife
beaters, saw nothing wrong or contradictory in
administering a spanking to a grown woman he believed had
behaved badly. He then left with a parting statement more
suited to a 12 year old seeking the solace of a "no
girls allowed" tree house. Worse, of course, was the
woman stating she loved him. Perhaps spanking for
pleasure goes back further than suspected.

Seriously, while this behavior would be
seen as very sexist today, younger fans should be made aware that this
was simply the temper of the times. Since it was as
inappropriate then as it is today for a man to punch a woman, spanking
was seen as an acceptable alternative years ago. Also, these dailies
came from an era when the biggest audience was composed of children.
That being the case, spanking was the type of punishment children
could identify with and Superman's exit remarks probably echoed the
feelings of his young male readers.

However,
it was also popular in movies and television for decades. The comics
simply reflected the popular culture around them. Keep in mind, too,
that these spankings were never of a cruel nature and were almost
always delivered for humor's sake.

There
was also a female counterpart to spanking humor that was a tad more
violent. It was called 'rolling pin humor,' and as the name implies,
it involved the woman (almost always the wife) clobbering her husband
with all manner of kitchen implements.

Again, this was done with a burlesque
kind of slapstick humor and often the man remained unscathed, or had a
classic comedic black eye.

This addendum isn't to condone any type
of domestic violence, but rather to reflect back on an era where
slapstick and screwball comedies relied heavily on physical humor to
reach their very visual punchlines.

Postscript

According to E. Nelson
Bridwell in his introduction to Superman From the 30s
to the 70s, the daily strip had Lois and Superman
married for a while in the 1950s. However, the writers
not being terribly imaginative not only ran out of ideas,
they reset the whole marriage in "Dallas"
fashion relegating the whole thing to dream status.